Graue and Walsh (1998) suggest that despite decades of qualitative and quantitative studies of early learning, research on young children has not attended closely enough to children’s experiences in local contexts, in specific cultures, at particular points in time. They argue for a situated and complex portrayal of inquiry:
Rather than sampling subjects to represent a population, we must be fiercely interested in individuals, particular individuals. The focus of enquiry must become intensely local …The lens of research must zoom in to a shot of the situated child. Her context is more than an interchangeable backdrop – it is part of the picture, lending life to the image portrayed by the researcher.
(Graue and Walsh, 1998 pp8-9)
Longitudinal ethnographic case studies have offered this project a route to situated understandings of the fine-grained realities of individual children’s experiences of the
new environment of playgroup, affording insights into ‘what what we do does’ (Foucault, cited by Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982, p187). As Simons argues:
… case study research is needed now more than ever before to challenge
orthodox thinking, to get beneath the surface of policy implementation to reveal in-depth understanding and, most importantly, to take a quantum leap in how we come to understand complex educational situations. (Simons, 1996, p231)
Different interpretations of the nature and purpose of case studies have led to debate about case study and theory, reliability, generalisability, appropriate forms of analysis and issues of representation in analytic writing. I now address these issues.
4.4.1 Case study and theory
Stake (1994) identified three types of case study in social research:
o intrinsic case study, where each case is viewed as a unique configuration, of
interest neither because the case is representative of other cases nor because it illustrates a particular issue, but because ‘in all its particularity and ordinariness, this case itself is of interest’ (Stake, 1994, p237)
o instrumental case study, where a particular case is selected because it is
expected to enable the researcher to explore or refine the understandings of particular phenomena or theories. Here, the case is of secondary interest to the issue.
o collective case study, where an instrumental case study is extended to a number of cases in order to inquire into either particular or general phenomena.
Miles and Huberman (1994, p29) use the term multiple-case sampling to describe the study of a range of similar and contrasting cases in order to strengthen the precision and validity of single case findings. In collective or multiple-case case studies, cases are chosen because the researcher believes that understanding the different cases may lead to more informed theorising about a wider selection of cases.
However, these categories are heuristic rather than functional as the iterative paths of research understandings blur the dividing lines between intrinsic, instrumental and collective case studies. Indeed, in this study, I began by selecting cases for their intrinsic interest, my first aim being to understand each case in as full and complex a manner as time and access permitted. As issues that contradicted or illustrated my initial research questions emerged, I began to look across cases and refine my questions, looking again at individual cases. The final approach used here is close to Miles and Huberman’s notion of multiple case studies, whilst encapsulating the particularity of each chosen case. This echoes Peshkin’s approach that each case can be read with interest in the case itself, but it is also possible to learn from the case about some class of things (Peshkin, 1986).
4.4.2 Case Study and Generalisability
The generalisability or external validity of qualitative research has been long contested, with differences of opinion emanating largely from different interpretations of the role and purpose of research, further confounded by notions of generalisability that have evolved out of quantitative research.
‘Generalisability’ in quantitative research is used to refer to the representativeness of the sample, often selected by using statistical or random sampling procedures. The validity of this representativeness is then accepted as a basis for making inferences across wider populations. Viewed in these terms, ‘generalisability’ appears incongruous with the aims of qualitative research projects where, rather than sampling randomly across a large number of cases, data are frequently collected from a small number of purposively selected cases. Simons proposes that the notion of ‘generalisability’ needs redefinition for qualitative research, arguing that posing the question of generalisability ‘assumes a polarity and stems from a particular view of research’ (Simons, 1996, p225). This view, she suggests, fails to comprehend the ‘unique and universal understandings’ offered by case studies, and therein lies the ‘paradox of case study’ (Simons, 1996), that its very strength of investigating particularity and uniqueness, often with uncertain yet
insightful and potentially innovative results, is considered a weakness by policy makers who only know how to value certainty and empirical generalisation. Simons likens the role of case study research to that of the artist, who by capturing a single instance locked in time and circumstances, manages to communicate a deep and enduring truth about the human condition. Thus ‘by studying the uniqueness of the particular, we come to understand the universal’ (Simons, 1996, p231).
For Stake, the strength of case studies lies in particularity rather than generalisation, and he proposes the concept of ‘naturalistic generalisation’, arguing that generalisation must be considered from the reader’s perspective:
Case studies will often be the preferred method of research because they may be epistemologically in harmony with the reader’s experience and thus to that person a natural basis for generalisation. (Stake, 1978, p5)
On this basis, case studies can modify generalisations, either by producing counter- arguments that acknowledge variability and lead to the refinement of a generalisation, or by producing positive examples and increasing confidence in the generalisation (Stake, 1995).
Stake’s argument is concordant with Goodwin and Goodwin’s lament that ‘the trouble with generalizations is that they don’t apply to particulars’ (Goodwin and Goodwin, 1996, p110). From this perspective, generalisability concerns studying the particular in order to identify generic processes on a theoretical and conceptual level, rather than accounting for practices in all populations:
… Generalisation in ethnography takes a different form from other approaches, including those more rooted in empirical generalisation. Whereas in such cases, final claims are formulated in terms of generalisations across a range of
particularity of their field setting right till the end, insisting that the meaning of their informants’ actions can only be grasped in their context as a whole.
(Erickson, 1977, p59)
This reflects a change in definitions of ‘generalisability’, moving away from an
essentially quantitative notion of statistical sampling and privileging representativeness across a broad population, and towards a definition of ‘generalisability’ as challenging or refining existing theory. Miles and Huberman make this point with regard to case studies in general and to multiple case studies in particular:
With multiple case studies, does the issue of generalizability change?
Essentially, no. We are generalizing from one case to the next on the basis of a match to the underlying theory, not to a larger universe.
(Miles and Huberman, 1994, p29)
This is not to imply that multiple cases allow more general conclusions than single cases: the key is to select ‘telling’ rather than ‘typical’ cases, where the exception is taken as seriously as the rule. Furthermore, the terms of analysis must be of ‘analytical induction’ rather than ‘enumerative induction’ (Mitchell in Ellen, 1984, discussed in 3.
above and later in this chapter).
In this thesis, generalisability is viewed in Anderson’s terms of ‘Lessons Learned’ (Anderson, 1998, p160), where a lesson is derived from a given case but has potential generalisability to other situations and settings whilst respecting particularity. As Street (2002) suggested, this gives the reader more of the responsibility, by saying:
This is the situation I studied, and these are the things I found going on there. Look at it in detail. How does it compare with things that you’ve observed? Are your processes a bit different? What is it in our two situations that could account for these differences?’ (Street, 2002)
This approach highlights the tentative and uncertain nature of theoretical propositions that must allow for differences from one setting to another, differences over time and differences in perspectives within one setting. However, this does not imply
relinquishing the notion of generalisability: the findings of this study are linked to existing theories of young children’s communicative strategies and to the findings of past and contemporary studies in the field, as discussed in chapters 2 and 3.
Generalisability pivots on the robustness of the conclusions drawn based on the depth and accuracy of data representation, and the need to convince readers of the research that the conclusions drawn are consistent with the evidence provided.
4.4.3 Case Study and Internal Validity
Internal validity refers to whether the findings make sense and the account is an accurate and credible representation of the phenomena studied (Miles and Huberman, 1994). Silverman (2000) discusses three frequently criticised weaknesses in qualitative research pertaining to internal validity: